


Serieux, mec?

by FLWhite



Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Drinking, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, JoMax, M/M, Obliviousness, a pun too far, maxel, simax
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22020421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite
Summary: We have characters who are close to who we really are. So sometimes the limit isn’t really clear, and there are people who don’t understand that me and Axel, that we’re not together in real life, that—Seriously, man?Axel must have brought his mike very close to his mouth; his voice booms over them all, over the audience, who titter as though on cue. He laughs too.*Turns out there are lots of people who don't understand. Conceived as ever in cahoots with @zetaophiuchi (hallo-catfish). Five short chapters.
Relationships: Axel Auriant-Blot/Maxence Danet Fauvel, Axel Auriant-Blot/Original Female Character, Maxence Danet Fauvel/J.F. Grimaud, Maxence Danet Fauvel/Original Female Character, Maxence Danet Fauvel/Simon Chossier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 53





	1. ticking all his boxes

**Author's Note:**

> All inspired by this segment from Axel and Maxence at the Médias en Seine festival in October 2019. https://peachesplumsstakesfangs.tumblr.com/post/188241239147/axel
> 
> I know the Médias en Seine festival happened on a Tuesday this year, but for fantasy purposes it was Friday, dac? Dac.

***

_A thing I discovered that I didn’t know _ , he says, the words coming so fast that they’re almost one on top of the other, _ the thing that can be “dangerous” for an actor on television with a series running for a long time is that sometimes people have a tendency, sometimes, to confuse you and your character. _

He smiles as he is met with smiles and nods from the hosts. _ We have characters who are close to who we really are. So sometimes the limit isn’t really clear, and there are people who don’t understand that me and Axel, that we’re not together in real life, that— _

_ Seriously, man? _Axel must have brought his mike very close to his mouth; his voice booms over them all, over the audience, who titter as though on cue. He laughs too. 

***

Radio people are robots, he decides. That’s why they keep the entirety of the Radio France building at the temperature of either a very weak freezer or a very powerful fridge. And that’s in turn why, he thinks, Axel seemed so eager to leave following their “Médias en Seine” segment. That had to be why Axel was practically curling into himself in his seat, arms crossed, legs crossed, ankles crossed, for the entire time they were onstage. After, he got caught up talking with Niels for a moment in the corridor, and only realized Axel was leaving as Niels lifts his eyes and hand in a belated farewell. _Bye man, see you next week_, he’d texted, when he realized that Axel hadn’t waited outside the building, which, fair enough, it isn’t exactly warm outside either. Nothing. Which, fair enough, it’s a Friday. Young man’s got a girlfriend, young man’s got a dog, young man’s got a mother.

He should text Axel again, he thinks, lacing his shoes and double-knotting them. (Nothing lamer than tripping on the dance floor.) He’s almost worked out a dad joke in his head about making sure to get a flu shot. But in the end he doesn’t send the text. There’s no way Axel hasn’t gotten his flu shot already. Axel’s always ticking all his boxes. Taking all his vitamins. Drinking all his water. Getting all his sleep. And then making dumbass jokes on national radio. If there’s a dad between them, it’s Axel, probably.

With a clutch of people from the Facto, he goes to the Lavomatic; he goes to Le Max, where Joris shows up with his cool indie moviemaking crowd as they start playing some trip hop; then he can’t quite remember where he goes next, except at eighteen past three he’s carefully working his way up the stairs, carefully because he’s leading a really cute brunette with a curly bob and a long yellow coat and big stompy boots by the hand and he’s sure that, if she realized how much effort it’s taking him just to walk straight and tall to his own door, she’s going to bail. It’s never happened before, that anybody he takes home changes their mind. Even when they had to lead _ him _ by the hand to his own apartment, practically carrying him, nobody’s bailed. But always he worries that they’ll see through him. And he’s not even sure what they’d find beneath.

He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror around six. The night was kind to him; he looks good. A little pink around his eyes and mouth, merely. She didn’t see through him. The only trouble is that he can’t quite remember her name, but he’s pretty sure it’s Brigitte. From the bed probably-Brigitte calls, laughingly, “I swear I thought I’d find you shacked up together, I thought it’d be a threesome, I’m disappointed.”

“Shacked?” He emerges blinking from the searing white glare of the bathroom LEDs into the twilight of his little garret, sliding the door shut behind him, wriggling it in its tracks to get it to close all the way. “What do you mean?”

“C’moooon,” probably-Brigitte giggles. “Now you’re embarrassing me.”

“Oh, _ now _?” He giggles in return. “Not when I was pretending to be Voldemort?” Blinking villany into his eyes, he pretends to wave a wand menacingly in her direction. 

“You’re good at it! No, really though. I feel like I’ve earned my inside scoop now. Tell. Are you ever going to go public? Are you going to move in together?”

“Me? Who?” He laughs. “Are you talking about J.F.? We’re not like that—” 

“Ma_xence._ You and Axel!”

He actually chokes on a mouthful of nothing. “What,” he says, when he is able. “What?”

Probably-Brigitte’s definitely-pretty eyes are wide. “Really? You’re not sleeping together? _ Shit_.”

He goes to the sink to compose himself and fills a glass of water. His mouth suddenly tastes like he’s been awake too long. His heart is trying to somersault into his throat. “Look, maybe you’d better go, Brigitte.” He finishes the water, wipes his mouth without looking at her. “Sorry. I can make you a coffee if you want.”

“Who the fuck is Brigitte?” she says through her teeth, clasping her bra. “I’m Irene.” 


	2. the price of fame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So. I wanted to know what you thought about—something. I want you to be, uh, totally honest.”  
*  
J.F. delivers some advice to his pretty friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These chapters are so short that I feel like I really should be posting 1x a day. Thanks for reading as always.

***

“Shit, it’s cold as the seventh circle,” says J.F., ducking under the awning of the café and making a face while swiping at his shoulders and upper arms where the gray of his coat has darkened to black under the light rain that has just begun to fall. “Let’s go inside, Maxe.”

Maxence lifts his cigarette, freshly lit, in answer, then takes a deep draw. J.F. rolls his eyes but drops into the rattan chair across their tiny table. “Can’t believe nobody’s made you quit yet.”

“Not for want of trying,” he says, trying not to let his hands shake too obviously. 

J.F. bends toward him with one eye a little narrowed. “Man, you look half-dead. Have you been sleeping? Didn’t you all wrap on SKAM last week?”

“Not quite yet.” He sucks again on the cigarette, then tips the remnants of his _ demi _into his mouth, swishes it around for a moment. J.F. isn’t going to be easily put off. Not when he left that weird phone message that has so effectively brought J.F. out, running to him in this December rain and chill. “So. I wanted to know what you thought about—something. I want you to be, uh, totally honest.”

“Oh?” Joris looks suddenly intent. He puts a gloved hand bracingly on Maxence’s elbow. “Look, I support you, man, I’m your friend, and I know you know this already, but I do believe that, like, all is love and stuff, love is love, men with men or women with—”

“What? No, I mean,” Maxence stammers, nearly dropping his cigarette. “I mean, yes, but, but what are you talking about? I’m not—is it even what I’m talking about?”

J.F. smiles all of a sudden, broadly, indulgently. “Okay, you go first, get it out. Let me buy you another beer.” After he orders for both of them, he leans in even closer. “Come on, I’m dying to know!” He cackles. 

Maxence can only muster a slow blink in return. He feels like it’s a recap of that time over the summer he tried to play Joris at chess while stoned out of his mind; he can’t even remember where it was, on grass or sand or asphalt, except that it was hot enough for both of them to have taken off their shirts and shoes and socks. “Uh, well, I took a girl home last night, Irene—”

“Uh huh? Interesting.” J.F. is raising one eyebrow. “So far not what I expected, but proceed.”

“And she, and uh,” he feels like a beet, a tomato, and a shellfish all at once, all overcooked and steaming. For the eleven hours since Irene slammed out of his apartment, apart from a brief bout of sleep disturbed by nightmares he can’t remember, it’s been like this: he felt himself turning red while meeting his own eyes in the mirror over his sink. Walking here, he felt every face turned knowingly, snickeringly on him. And for what? For a ridiculous joke that Axel had thrown out with typically impeccable timing. A ridiculous fantasy; no, not even a fantasy. A fleeting thought. A strange little dream he had once, when they had just shot the scene with the paints. 

He forces himself to look J.F. in the face and to meet the seesaw between concern and exasperation there. “She said she thought I was sleeping with Axel. Well, that Axel would be there, I don’t know. She said something about a threesome,” he pauses to breathe and releases what he hopes sounds more like a giggle than a panicked gasp, “isn’t that crazy? _ Putain_, the price of fame, right? Joris?”

J.F. regards him with the same eyebrow high. “And what did you tell her?”

“I—wait, what? I told her that she’d better go? What, you think—”

“I assumed when you started the story that Axel knew already, but now I’m thinking he doesn’t, and so I think you’d better be having this conversation with him, not me, no?” J.F. sips coldly at his beer. “That’s my advice?”

The chessboard in his mind has been knocked over; he stares at his fingers, curled around his cigarette, as a rook, his, rolls into the sand or the grass. “Wait, but wait, Joris,” he says, “Axel and I—we’re not together.”

J.F. rolls his eyes and sets down his glass. The uneven little table creaks. “Come on.”

“Really!”

A small vertical line appears between J.F.’s eyebrows. “Really? No, but for actually serious? Not even a little bit?” He gives Maxence another sudden smile. “Considering we, well…”

If his face gets any hotter, it will rise like a balloon from his shoulders. “No, Joris, but no, I was _ so _ high! That—that doesn’t count.” He cringes as J.F. frowns. “Sorry, I mean, but I _ was_, and you too—”

“Seriously, man?” J.F. holds his eyes until he is forced to look away, into the foamy depths of his fresh _ demi_, as he glugs. “Maxence, you hurt my feelings.”

He lowers his glass, still cringing, when he hears J.F. snort. But J.F. just reaches over and thwaps him on the shoulder. It’s not entirely gentle, but the look he receives is. “Just go talk to him.”

“Th-there’s nothing to talk about.” 

“_Putain _, if you keep making me roll my eyes like this they’ll get stuck.” J.F. cackles again. “Monsieur doth protest too much. I have never seen a man turn so red.”

He shoots to his feet in lieu of saying anything, nearly toppling the flimsy chair. 

“Hey? Where are you—Maxe? Hey!”

As fast as he can, he swaddles his face with the scarf he’d been sitting on, rummages in his pockets, curses because he just used up all his cash at the fruit market that morning after evicting Irene, and mumbles, already stepping onto the sidewalk, “I’ll—I’ll Paypal you! Sorry!”


	3. firm about boundaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Or text me,” Axel calls after him. “Uh, text me whenever.”  
*  
These two beautiful fools have made 2019 quite a mad year for me. I guess I owe them a debt of gratitude for the surge in creativity (and the wasted work hours).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, y'all, and may it be filled with growth and unapologetic pleasures. And also, bon anniversaire to our favorite paninihead.

***

Twenty-two minutes after leaving J.F. at the café, he finds himself panting, sweating under his scarf, at Axel’s new door. Someone going inside held the building door open for him so he hasn’t had even the chance to warm up with a “hey, it’s me” at Axel’s disembodied voice through the callbox. 

He knocks and immediately regrets it; not just the knock, but the having half-jogged onto the metro and half-jogged out of it, the being hatless and gloveless and with his hair completely fucked up by the rain and the bitter wind at this random hour when they’d be seeing each other in less than thirty hours on set out in the 20ème anyway, the showing up like this without texting or calling ahead. He regrets the beer and tobacco heavy on his breath, he regrets not sleeping properly, he regrets bringing Irene home, he regrets the Lavomatic and Le Max and those couple shots of shitty mezcal somewhere in there; all of it, and most of all what he said into that fucking microphone on that fucking stage on fucking national radio.

Axel is slow to the door. When he opens it, his hair is down and his eyes are huge and his mouth is slightly slack and his cheeks are as pink as Maxence feels his own to be and  _ fuck, shit _ ,  _ fuck,  _ Maxence thinks as those fucking  _ beacons  _ of blue start dragging him forward, and in, and down like tractor beams,  _ he really is just disgustingly adorable when you just let yourself see it _ . “Axel, sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that, I mean, did you—are you—”

“Oh. Maxe?” Axel sounds a little husky; he clears his throat, repeats with greater urgency, “Maxence? Hey? What’s going on?”

“Is that the pizza, Axel?” It’s Charlène, from within. Her smiling voice is a long nail of ice hammered down Maxence’s spine. 

“Uh—no. Just a second,” Axel calls over his shoulder, then shuts the door almost all the way and motions Maxence into the hallway, shifting the collar of his hoodie, which, now that Maxence’s eyes seem to be working properly again, looks like it had been tugged on in a rush. He thinks he detects a hickey. The nail of ice cracks, sending narrow shards into each of Maxence’s limbs, and he suddenly feels the stiffness in his knuckles and knees, the numb tip of his nose, from his mad dash in the cold. “Maxe, what’s happened?” 

“I—”  _ I’ve said farewell to professionalism and artistic distance and also I would maybe not mind kissing you _ , he thinks. He says, tongue frozen to his teeth, face and neck and ears on fire, “I—”

Axel’s mouth smiles, but his eyes are bright and anxious. “Didja bring our pizza after all? I’m surprised, I thought you said you had like two other short films and three shoots lined up after SKAM ended, but I mean, I guess delivery tips well?”

“Sorry, I’ll—I’ll just tell you Monday,” says Maxence, dragging his lips into the semblance of a grin. “Sorry I interrupted.”

“Uh, sure, if you’re sure?” Axel inclines his head toward his left shoulder, making a silly face. It’s so stupid. It’s so lovable. Maxence is forced to briefly shut his eyes as he turns away, raising a hand in farewell. “Or text me,” Axel calls after him. “Uh, text me whenever.”

Axel’s new building has a lovely Belle Époque facade but a renovated interior that’s fancy in that shiny spotless hyper-modern way, but, Maxence reflects, crouching on the landing below Axel’s, elbows on his knees, the sound insulation is absolutely shit. 

“Was that  _ Maxence _ ?” Charlène is saying, brightly. “Why didn’t you invite him in, you dummy?” She giggles. “Did you double-book us?”

“Seriously?” Axel says, after a very long pause.

Charlène chortles. “Oh God, you really did double-book us! Amazing.”

“Charlie, please, fuck, you’re supposed to be my girlfriend!” Axel’s voice drops. “Maxence and I are not together.”

“Wow, you look like you just washed your face in ketchup,  _ choupi _ . No, really—I just assumed! After you asked to take a break during taping last year.”

“Fuck, does everyone think we’re—we’re a  _ thing _ ?” Maxence starts, realizing that he has mouthed these precise words to himself while Axel half-shouts them from above. He presses his face into his forearms, willing himself to leave, but his feet absolutely refuse to budge.

“Not  _ everyone _ , I hear some of your fans are, ah, firm about boundaries.”

“And, don’t you—you don’t mind?”

“What? Why?” She’s laughing even harder. “He’s very beautiful. Anyway, you should’ve invited him in! I haven’t even properly hung out with him all this time. You’re keeping him from me, aren’t you, hm?” 

Axel starts to answer, but Maxence doesn’t wait to hear what he says. With ears so hot he thinks they may burn holes through the knit of his scarf, he rushes down the stairs, through the building’s bleakly modern foyer, and out into the sharp night, where, leaning dazed against a pale corner pillar, he fishes out his phone from his pocket and thumbs it alight. It’s a long while before he realizes he’s holding it upside-down. 

Notifications crowd the screen: Joris, Agathe, Simon, Pauline from the Facto, his mother’s customary Saturday photo of the cat. For a moment he contemplates replying to Agathe’s “ hi ~ lunch tomorrow, just us?” But then he imagines her, too, shocked and half-giggling, bending toward him across the table:  _ You weren’t? Oh Maxou, I thought for sure—well, I figured you’d tell me sooner or later—maybe I’d hear it from him directly someday—  _

He shoves the phone away and heads for the Métro, fleeing. As he waits for the train to arrive, by instinct, he extracts it again. Another lozenge of white, sliding onscreen, joins the others. His throat clicks, suddenly arid, though he’s sweating again from the jog to the station. Axel.  _ Can we meet up before the shoot starts Monday, somewhere around there, maybe that café next to the Monoprix with the pizza frites? Say 17h?  _ Two sheepishly grinning emojis.  _ I know you’d prefer after, but 1h30 is a little late for geezers like me.  _

“Oh,” he says aloud, as the doors clack shut behind him. It’s a full car of damp people, all of them smelling of fatigue and frustration. He wishes he could sit. His head hurts, and his stomach too. 17h would be just an hour before they’re to be on set for hair and makeup, so it can’t be anything. Probably Axel will make some more asinine jokes and order another plateful of those unbelievably greasy pizza frites, and they’ll have a drink, and they’ll head to the shoot, and they’ll do their goddamn jobs. 

It can’t be anything, he repeats, all the way home. He lies down on his unmade bed and is asleep almost before he can finish taking off his shoes.

At half-past midnight he wakes panting and again sweating from a dream he immediately forgets. He dials Simon because there’s no way Simon’s asleep. In fact, Simon answers in the middle of what sounds like an industrial metal concert. Once he’s made his way into the alley behind the club, he says only “Maxe,” sounding already worried, and waits. 

“I—” Maxence swallows, coughs. “I need your help. It’s—weird, it’s—I can’t talk like this. Can you come over tomorrow? I’ll get you a croissant from that place you like. Three, if you want.”

Immediately, so warmly that Maxence’s eyes grow a little wet, Simon replies, “Just one’s fine, but I’ll take a chocolate-chip viennoise too if they still have any left. See you at ten.”


	4. since when has that been a problem?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon will understand, Simon will know how to get the hell out of this mess. There’s no need to build him up. “It’s Axel.”  
*  
Just one more short installment to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who else is excited/nervous as hell about Arthur season?  
Thanks as ever for reading!

***

Simon says nothing, just puts his gloved hands warmly on Maxence’s shoulders and squeezes. As they part after the third _ bise _, he finally asks, blond brows crinkled in concern, “What’s happened?”

A fire engine whines by in the street below. For an irrational moment he thinks it’s coming for him, him and his searing face. _ But no, _he tells himself sternly. This is Simon, sweet Simon, not sarcastic Joris. Simon is used to dealing with weird shit from people. He’s a professional, really, from his old days at the salon and nowadays at the agency, giving haircuts to the ambitious models, the temperamental writers, the nasty managers, and the people wealthy beyond belief, the worst lot of all. Simon will understand, Simon will know how to get the hell out of this mess. There’s no need to build him up. “It’s Axel.”

Simon’s expression is perfectly unreadable, which is pretty much the most terrifying look Maxence has ever seen on him. He seems to think Maxence is going to keep talking; after a long silence, he says, “And? What did you do?”

“Well, fuck, I think I really fucked things up. I don’t know.” He gestures vaguely at the paper sack of pastries. “Have a croissant.”

Simon puts a consoling palm on the back of his shoulder while reaching into sack and extracting the chocolate-chip viennoise. “Poor Maxe. Well, there was a time before Axel Auriant, and there’s going to be a time after him, too. Was he at least civil about it?” Simon bites into the viennoise, thoughtfully. “He doesn’t seem like the type to burn bridges.”

“Bridges?” A decided sensation of dejà-vu is settling over him. He squints; then he realizes. “Wait, wait, _ putain _ .” He presses the tips of his fingers into his hot cheekbones, rubs his palms over his eyes. This dream is way, way too freaky; he doesn’t like it. Maybe he will wake up soon. “Are you— _ you _ think I’m sleeping with Axel, too? But he has a girlfriend!”

“Okay, M’sieur, since when has _ that _been a problem?” Simon smiles, whitely. “Mmm, you remember you and me, 2016, June, no? That was a fun time.”

“Yeah, sure, but that was on the road with Alessandro, and Alessandro’s supply of shrooms! Doesn’t count.” He carries on in spite of Simon’s pout. “Anyway, they interviewed us last week and I said we weren’t together.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Simon nods, with gravity. 

“How—I mean, what? You listen to Radio France now?” He tries for a chuckle. “Since when do they play underground metal?” 

It’s as though Simon never heard him. “So Axel’s pissed, that’s understandable.” He continues, patiently. “I don’t really understand why you’re still pretending, either, man. Look, just apologize to Axel already.” 

“Simon, we are _ not _fucking.”

“Oh, stop it. You can’t imagine people are going to _ care _. Well, they might care, but only in good ways.” Simon shuts his eyes and clasps his hands before him, beaming. “Ah, romance. Ah, the power of art. Ah, when art becomes life.” 

“But we’re not, _ we are not together_.”

Simon blinks several times in a row, rapidly. “Huh? Aren’t you?” Now he has both hands on Maxence’s shoulders again, gripping much harder than before. “Maxe. For real?”

“You—” With shaking hands, he removes the potted aloe from one of the stools in the corner and collapses onto it without bothering to brush away the crumbs of dirt left behind. His head feels like a hive of bees. Very angry bees. They have stung his tongue and made it thrice its proper size. “You—”

Simon releases his lower lip from between his teeth with a long sigh. “_Fucking _ fuck. There goes three hundred _ balles _down the drain.”

***

While chewing the last of the croissant he got for himself, he texts Axel back after Simon leaves with a final guilty wave. He chases the buttery mouthful with a glug of the green smoothie that Simon ran down to the marché to buy him as penance for making the bet. 

Indignation, fully vented, has cleared him out, made him feel tough, shellacked, shiny. So what if Axel’s going to be like, _ maybe we should stop hanging out _? So what if he’ll be all formal and horrible, like they’re actually just coworkers punching their time cards, like it’s all been totally and entirely normal? He knows Axel would never make any trouble for the show. He’ll just say goodbye as blithely as ordering extra truffles on his fucking pizza frites, and it’ll be done, it’ll be over.

He again hears Simon’s words: there was a time before Axel Auriant, and there’s going to be a time after him, too.

_ 17h it is. _

“Oh God,” he breathes, and taps _ send_.


	5. you know that already

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You twit_, he thinks, and _I am never going to fucking live this down._  
*  
And to cap this silliness off, a final installment. Thank you once again for reading!

***

By the time he arrives at 17h10 (as always), Axel has already ordered the frites with extra truffles, but not a single one is out of place. They sit quietly in their basket, centered on the slightly chipped faux marble of the tabletop, steaming atmospherically under the yellow light of the heat lamps; meanwhile, Axel himself is cloaked by the shadow cast by his pulled-low hood, his hands invisible, presumably deep in his pockets. 

“’Ello,” says Axel. He’s hardly audible beneath the traffic and the people streaming in and out of the Monoprix for their after-work Christmas shopping. “Help yourself.”

He opens his mouth to say “hi” and instead says “I’m sorry,” quavering like a grandmother. “I’m sorry, Axel.”

“Wha—wait,” Axel pushes his chair back, as though to stand up. “Maxe. I’m sorry, I’m the one should be sorry.” When Maxence shows no signs of approaching, he does stand, and holds out his ungloved hands, palms up, supplicatory. “I was—I wasn’t expecting you, Saturday. I should’ve had you come in, it was fucking brutal outside, I—”

“I’m, I shouldn’t have, I,” his Adam’s apple feels like it’s turned to a block of cement, but he tries to swallow anyway. “I don’t know why I said that onstage. I wasn’t thinking. I mean, I wasn’t serious, or I am, I don’t want to stop seeing you, I,” his ears, having caught up with his tongue, begin to burn. “Wait—”

Axel’s eyes are searchlight-wide, their blue positively glowing in the twilight. He takes the three steps between them like he’s wading through deep water. “Oh. Oh my God.” Maxence’s jaw works, but it, too, is turning into cement. A strange low creak is all that comes out. “I don’t want to stop either, Maxe. But, people are going to talk, or keep talking. I mean, you know that already, but,” Axel inhales, “but you don’t care? Seriously?”

_ You twit_, he thinks, and _ I am never going to fucking live this down. _ “Seriously,” he whispers. Axel’s bushy head fits just right under his chin and Axel’s hands feel warm on his back even through his coat and sweatshirt and they squeeze each other for so long that it takes Axel’s phone alarm going off to remind them to hurry toward set. 

***

“Ah yeah?” 

In the bar of sunlight through the open window of Eliott and Lucas’s apartment—really the work of a bank of LEDs—Axel’s eyelashes as he slides his lids half-shut are the color of copper. He leans in at the right moment, this time; he pauses in the agreed-upon way, with his nose barely touching Axel’s forehead; then he sees Axel’s mouth, half-parted, unbelievably plush, waiting for his, and knows he’s going to fail again even as he begins his line, his one real line in this entire fucking episode: “You could just say k-k-kiss me.” 

He sighs as Axel’s eyes open with a little chuckle and David sings out “cut” for the fourth time in twenty minutes. Axel pats him on the bicep as David approaches them, saying “Once more, _ mes petits_.” As usual, though David speaks without the least bit of impatience, Maxence nonetheless wishes the furniture would come alive and eat him whole. “Be serious, boys.” They are clapped on the shoulder, gently. “Be _ lovers_. Now kiss.” 

Xavier laughs from behind the main camera. “Ready when you are.”


End file.
